inXile Entertainment announced this morning that it will bring legendary RPG developer Chris Avellone on to help develop The Bard's Tale IV if the crowdfunding campaign for the game on Kickstarter reaches the stretch goal of $1.9 million. It's pretty close to that goal now; as of this writing $1,364,999 has been raised from 30,723 backers with 11 more days to go. Initially inXile asked the community for $1.25 million.

The Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for Yooka-Laylee has closed, raising around $3,286,166 (according to a currency conversation from Google - or £2,090,104). Developer Playtonic Games is continuing the funding drive through PayPal.

inXile Entertainment announce this week that that the original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate will be given away for free to anyone willing to back its current crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter with a $20 or higher pledge.

The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York has announced the first games to be officially inducted in to its World Video Game Hall of Fame. There's no denying that all of these games deserve to be put into a hall of fame; many of them either broke new ground or served as benchmarks that influenced future games and inspired game developers.

The first games to be inducted to the Hall of Fame are Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Doom, and World of Warcraft.

As promised, inXile has launched the official Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for its comedic action RPG sequel, The Bard's Tale IV. Yesterday the developer announced that anyone pledging $20 or more to fund the upcoming game would get access to three free games: The Witcher and The Witcher 2 from CD Projekt RED, and its own game Wasteland 2.

Entertainment Media Council announced that the print edition of the new book Online Game Pioneers at Work, is now available in print at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores around the world. The book is being billed as a history book of sorts focusing on the online gaming space, and features 412 pages of interviews from the video game industry's biggest influencers, movers, and shakers.

Bandai Namco Entertainment America is kicking off a number of festivities to commemorate the 35th anniversary of its iconic game series, PAC-MAN today. PAC-MAN first launched in Japanese arcades on May 22, 1980. Since that time the multiple games have appeared on countless platforms over the last 35 years. To celebrate this major milestone, Bandai Namco has updated the mobile releases of PAC-MAN and PAC-MAN Lite with a new classic-inspired user interface. Both games are available on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Getting out in front of it by a couple of weeks developer inXile announced this morning its tentative plans to launch a crowd-funding campaign for The Bard’s Tale IV on Monday June 2nd at 6 AM PST via Kickstarter.

The crowdfunding campaign lines up with the 30th anniversary of the classic, comedic computer role-playing game series originally created by Interplay and developer Brian Fargo (who just happens to be the founder of inXile, in case you didn't know).

Organizers of Gamelab, the "games and interactive entertainment conference" taking place in Barcelona, Spain June 24th-26th announced today that they will honor Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani with a Legend Award. Iwatani, who is now teaching in Japan, will also discuss the state of video games training programs in that region during the event.

Fansided brings to our attention a video that recreates the Floyd Mayweather v. Manny Pacquiao fight in Mike Tyson's Punchout. The video, created by YouTubers Noober Goober Gaming, gives us some classic videogame renders of both fighters, complete with lots of hugging.

On its very first day of existence, the Kickstarter campaign for Yooka-Laylee - a platformer game being developed by former Rare employees who worked on the Donkey Kong Country games and Banjo-Kazooie - earned an additional $1 million. The last time we reported on the game's fundraising progress it was inching towards $1 million. As of this very moment, the Kickstarter for Yooka-Laylee is at right around $2,015,658.

The Internet Archive has made it so that thousands of MS-DOS game can be embedded and playable in tweets (hat tip to Wired's Chris Kohler for first reporting on this). Yes, you read that right, you can embed a playable game in a tweet to your followers.

A newly discovered glitch in From Software's hit action RPG Bloodborne puts the game's camera in a weird perspective.

YouTube user PaiNz has captured the strange camera bug that locks the game into a top-down view like the original Grand Theft Auto games - which is likely why he named his video "Grant Theft Bloodborne."

The Strong (Museum of Play) in Rochester, New York has announced the fifteen video games selected as finalists vying to be inducted in the World Video Games Hall of Fame for 2015. Finalists include Doom, FIFA, The Legend of Zelda, The Oregon Trail, Pac-Man, Pokémon, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, World of Warcraft, Pong, Angry Birds, and Minecraft.

This year's inductees, which will be chosen by a panel of experts, will be announced during a ceremony at The Strong museum on Thursday, June 4 at 10:30 a.m.

According to this IGN report GameStop will soon accept older console systems as trade-ins for in-store credit or cash. According to the report, the country's top games retailer will launch pilot programs in its New York City and Birmingham markets. Those two market's represent around 250 retail stores.

No one from DMA Designs (the company that created the original PC strategy game series) who were on the original design team for Grand Theft Auto is involved in the BBC’s upcoming dramatization about the game’s creation, according to what DMA Designs writer Steve Hammond tells GamesRadar. Reported last month, the film is based on David Kushner’s 2012 book Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto.

On April 10 at 7 pm you can get an artistic view of video games' most prolific characters when Image Gallery in New York City hosts the Artcade Classics art exhibition. The exhibit will feature artist renditions of some of video games' most iconic characters from such games as Super Mario Bros., Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!, Street Fighter, and more.

The exhibit will also offer attendees a chance to play classic arcade games running on iPads inside custom retro cabinets.

Apparently we missed the fact that Tactical Simulations Interactive (TSI) decided to cancel postpone its crowdfunding campaign for its PC role-playing game Seven Dragon Saga on Kickstarter yesterday. While the Kickstarter was not on a trajectory to raise the $450,000 it was aiming for, it did manage to bring in over $106,000 from 1,860 backers before TSI pulled the plug.

Last Week Tactical Simulations Interactive announced Gateway, a new system that allows players to transfer their favorite characters across multiple role-playing games that support the system. TSI’s first game, Seven Dragon Saga, will support Gateway, and Harebrained Games and inXile have committed to supporting the system as well.

Even as OtherSide Entertainment's spiritual sequel to the Ultima Underworld series inches ever so much closer to getting funded on Kickstarter, it has already managed to get approved by the Steam Greenlight community. While this is good news for those interested in what former Looking Glass Studios developers are capable of creating, the team still needs to raise $111,883 to hit its base crowd-funding goal of $600,000 on Kickstarter.

OtherSide Entertainment has launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter for a spiritual sequel to Ultima Underworld called Underworld Ascendant. The campaign has already generated $142,104 of its $600,000 goal with 29 more days to go.

Bethesda Softworks is giving away its classic CRPG Elder Scrolls: Arena for PC away for free. All you have to do is visit the official site for the game at www.elderscrolls.com/arena and find the download link.

Elder Scrolls: Arena is the first game in Bethesda's popular RPG series. Its success would spawn such sequels and spin-offs as Daggerfall, Battlespire, Redguard, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim - and coming soon to PS4 and Xbox One - The Elder Scrolls Online.

Nintendo UK's Twitter account has some bad news for Tetris fans. According to a recent tweet, the Gameboy version of the classic puzzler will be yanked from the 3DS eShop at the end of the year (December 31). Nintendo UK also revealed that Tetris Axis is also getting yanked.

GOG.com is giving away what is commonly referred to as "Ultima 0," the very first role-playing game from Richard Garriott. Akalabeth: World of Doom is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as an early Christmas gift from Garriott and GOG.com. It joins GOG.com's other free games created by Garriott including Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire, and Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams.

Developer Double Fine and 2 Player Productions today launched Devs Play, a new video series that pairs game developers with popular and classic games. Devs Play is described as a "Let's Play" series that combines classic video game titles with notable developers who provide running commentary on the games they are playing.

Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, the creators of the classic 2D point-and-click adventure game Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island (and many other games over the years) have something to celebrate today: their latest endeavor, a classically-styled 2D point-and-click adventure game project called Thimbleweed Park has been fully funded via a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. The game managed to raise $626,250 from 15,623 backers when it finally ended eerier today.

The Linux, Android, and iPhone versions of Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition will be released December 16. Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition was released last year at around this same time for PC, Mac and iPad. Linux support will be added via Update 1.3, which will also include lots of bug fixes, better pathfinding, improved multiplayer, German and Spanish language support (and a few other languages), an option to increase font size, and much more.

Ralph H. Baer, the man recognized as the father of video games, passed away on Saturday at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire at the age of 92. Baer created the very first video game system - the Magnavox Odyssey. It was patented in 1971 and launched in the summer of 1972. It sold 130,000 units the first year.

Julian Gollop, best known as the creator of the popular X-COM series of tactical strategy games, has launched his latest game on Steam Early Access. The game is called Chaos Reborn and officially launches on Steam Early Access for PC, Mac, and Linux on December 9 for $19.99. Chaos Reborn is sequel of sorts to the cult classic 1985 ZX Spectrum strategy title Chaos: The Battle of Wizards. This turn-based strategy role-playing game lets players control a wizard who casts spells to summon creatures for an army to use against AI controlled opponents and other players.

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: I meant lifeless planet, Time frame is an exploration game. Your dropped onto a world which is gonna be hit by a metor in 10 seconds, but due to time dilation ,you actually have ten minutes, so you can explore the world, in it's last moments, as08/01/2015 - 5:32pm